Specification and Strategy

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SPECIFICATION AND STRATEGY JOHN PEREZ

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CONTENT PAGE

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STRATEGY

DESIGN IDEA

CAD SOFTWARES

DESIGN DEVELOPMENT

PROJECT 1 EXTENSION

PROJECT 2

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CONCEPT

SKETCHES

PROTOTYPE

FINAL OUTCOME

PROJECT 1 OUTCOME

FINAL OUTCOME

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STRATEGY

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STRATEGY Out of the three task given, I decided to choose the Design museum brief (Consumption for Self Identification) This was a huge task to tackle. Going to any direction was possible and there was no restrictions. Design Factory brief has asked us how can we design new objects, spaces and systems to affect the way people see themselves and the roles they fulfil. This brief is all about user-centric design. User consideration has to be involved in every stages of creating this project.

One of the first task is to go to the Design Museum and visit the exhibition called ‘Women, Fashion and Power’. We are asked to choose an exhibit and critically analyse how the exhibit have an affect to the user when engaging to the exhibition. I never knew how big of an impact fashion creates to the society. We choose and buy our clothes to feel something strongly about ourself. It is either to feel powerful, confident, rebellious and many more emotion we want to feel when purchasing the clothing we chose. In a way, I want my design to achieve the same affection to the user.

When I was at the exhibition, I realised a problem and a route to focus on for this project. noticed that we consume immense amount of clothes every month just to keep up with the trends. Then after couple of months, we no longer use them.This led to the subject of consumerism. Consumerism and materialism is a problem that most of us call and consider as our ‘lifestyle’. Our life became a repetitive cycle where we work hard to earn money, products are constantly advertised for us to buy and finally we consume. Social class and impressing people by buying prestigious object has become a priority.

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CONCEPT

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CONCEPT There are many problems with consumerism and materialism. One of them is that we don’t even realise that this is a problem to the society and we think that this is just a convention. Another issue we tend to ignore is the impact that causes to us and to our planet. We buy a lot of things and deny the damages that we do to our one and only planet.

The great damage that it contributes is alarming, it is harming us and the place we live in more than we know it.

There are number of stages of consumerism (Extraction, Production, Distribution, Consumption, Disposal) The first stage of the consumption is the extraction. This stage is where they collect all the resources that they need. They get that resources from our very own planet. Although, they mention the issue many times on the media but a lot us still doesn’t completely understand the issue. After they’ve collected every resources they need, it then leads to the production stage. It is a very harmful procedure to our nature.

Pollution and harmful substances are being produced when making the products we consume. Finally, disposal stage.

This stage is when we get rid of all the things we have purchased, making more spaces for new products. The production stage uses tons of materials that isn’t recyclable nor good to the environment. All of our waste are here to stay and the society is hiding the truth.

When designing this project, I knew I had to think about the user in every stage of production. I want the user to be familiar with the design and will immediately have a clue how to use the product.

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Bins around Oxford Circus, London.

I looked at the existing design of bins. Bins we have around us are very practical and it does the job it was designed for. I didn’t want to change the functionality of the bins. What I want my design to do is to create more awareness, allowing people to put more thought into their actions.

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Recycle friendly bins.

When designing this project, I knew I had to think about the user in every stage of production. I want the user to be familiar with the design and will immediately realise what the product is and what the purpose of it is. Research says that 9 out of 10 people would recycle more if it were made easier. I completely agree. If recycling was easier, more people will do it. I want the user to have an easy experience with recycling.

When looking at these recycle friendly bins, I can’t help but criticise the design. Having multiple bins, categorising the recyclable waste is a good idea. However, it can be very confusing for the user. I want to change this by minimising the number of recycling bins into one.

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DESIGN IDEA

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I went and visited Tate Modern and I discovered this uniquely designed donation box. It was getting a lot of attraction from the tourist and visitors of Tate Modern. Because of its unique design, it was also getting a lot of donation.

Donation is an act of willingness and care. Most donation boxes remain empty as people don’t feel motivated enough to participate in the donation process. Designers of TATE donation box have made efforts to understand the motivational aspect of such donation activity. They have designed the box to improve the whole experience of donating a few pence with a sense of play and achievement. I want to create a sense of achievement when interacting with the product. I want them to experience that they are part of the problem, I want them to acknowledge that they are contributing to the environmental issues to the world.

Donation Box in Tate Modern

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See-through Bins

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We’ve lost our curiosity. Almost everything has been done and everything is provided for us so our life would be as easy as possible. That is the problem.

We a lot of us don’t know how the world really function.

Bins a designed to do one thing and that is to clean our surroundings. Another function of a bin is to visually make us think that our surrounding is clean. I want to change that. I want people to realize how much waste we produce in certain amount of time.

I want to bring the unpleasant qualities of what our bins contain. I want people to see what we contribute to our surroundings and to the planet we live in.

I want to redesign the bins we have. I want to change the experience that it creates. Redesigning it will hopefully allow people to think about their actions.

People need to see the truth. To perceive the truth I will need a transparent material.

My idea is to create a transparent bin. This allows us to visually realize what we do to our environment.

With my design, I’m bringing the unpleasant qualities of what our bins contain. I also want to create an experience. I want people to realize that they are contributing a small percentage of the waste crisis in the world. I’m going to have the illustration of the world and in time the user will see the waste rising and every time they insert their waste, they will realize that they are contributing rubbish to our world.

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SKETCHES

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I started sketching some of my ideas of how the bin would look like. Because this is a new approach to the design of the bin, I didn’t want to change the aesthetics of the current design.

Less is more. I planned this to be very minimal and each component to be practical. Research says that 80% of the things we throw away are recyclable yet we recycle 33% of it. I want my design to prioritise recycling. To do this, I’m creating a bigger compartment for recyclable waste and less for non-recyclable waste.

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CAD SOFTWARE

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I started to create a digital prototype. I used a CAM (Computer Aided Design) software to design my bin. The software is called ‘AutoDesk 123D’. It was quite confusing to use at first but when you get used to it, you can design anything you desire. It was helpful to see my design in a 3D perspective. With the software, I was able to resize and change the shape of the bin. This helped me move on to the next stage of the project.

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PROTOTYPING

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I created 2 prototypes for my bin. I wanted to see how it would look like so I can make improvements to it. The purpose of prototyping is to produce the product without costing a lot of money. I also created a prototype to discover if there’s any problem with the design, aesthetically can ergonomically.

For the first prototype, I used a cardboard. It was the perfect material for my prototype because, you can cut the shape you want easily and it was quite a strong material.

I also used a transparent material to see if the waste inside is visible.

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DESIGN DEVELOPMENT

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I thought the perfect material for my product is Perspex Acrylic. It is seethrough and it is a strong material. The only problem with this is cutting the shape I want. To cut the shape I want I will need a laser cutter. The laser cutter cuts the material precisely. The images shows the guidelines for the laser cutter machine. I used Adobe Illustrator to create these files. The laser cutter machine reads Illustrator files. I measured my Acrylic sheets and added the outline, allowing the laser cutter to cut the acrylic accurately with the shape and size I want.

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FINAL OUTCOME

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Finally, my finished design. This is the transparent bin that will hopefully change the experience of waste disposal. This is a miniature version of my design, original size will be difficult to create. I used a frosted acrylic so the earth shape cutout will be more visible. Because it’s a see-through bin, it would be less visible at night. I’ve added the LED feature so it would be more obvious.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with my design. It has a very modern and sleek look to it. I just hope that it would change the way people think about the waste disposal. I hope it would inspire others to make a difference.

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PROJECT 1 EXTENSION

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I wanted to show people my design to get some feedback and to know what to change in the future. A lot of people really liked the idea and the appearance of the bin. Overall, I got some good feedback and was pleased with my accomplishments.

There are some improvements to achieve. The bin doesn’t seem to communicate very well. A lot of people didn’t recognized what the design was. That was one of the main aim that I failed to do. In the next couple of pages, you will see how I tackled the problem.

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In the bin, you will see that there are no attempts of communication to the user. No typography or any messages to the user. I researched what graphics goes into the bins we have today. I noticed that it’s very simplistic. All it has is the logo of a many throwing rubbish at a bin. I thought, because this isn’t your average bin, it should have a different logo.

In the images you will see that I played around with the current logo and made it suitable for my design.

I’m also going to communicate to the user with typographic messages. In one of the sketches, I’m sketching the how the layout of the message would look like.

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For the message, I create typographic etchings on the surface of the acrylic. For the message, I will not just tell people to what to do. I want people to realize how much waste we really produce. To do that, I will use some environmental facts available online. I will use facts such as “ The amount of trash generated in UK could fill Royal Albert Hall in 2 hours� To make sense out of these facts, this bin will locate in Royal Albert Hall. That way people will realize how much waste we create and they will get to embrace the fact.

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PROJECT 1 OUTCOME

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PROJECT 2

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I decided to create another project, linking in with my bin project. There are many useful materials that we can use. But we choose to waste them. That waste that we create is slowly but surely damaging the planet we live in.

Although, a lot of us recycle, it is still not enough to make a difference.

I thought instead of encouraging people to ‘recycle’ we should encourage people to ‘reuse’ more. Instead of putting our waste in the bin, some of the things we throw away are completely reusable. If we reuse more as well as recycle, it would create such as a massive impact to our planet.

I think we shouldn’t design a product that will outlive us.

A lot of product designers are using materials that last for years and with dangerous substances. Materials such as plastic are incredibly harmful to our planet. It last for years and plastics just goes straight to our wasteland.

I want to eliminate plastic permanently. I want to start with the plastic shopping bags. Plastic shopping bags are weak and we see a lot of them in the streets, being flown by air. I want to replace plastic with something much more environmentally friendly. I thought Cardboard is a very good alternative. Cardboard is a very strong material and 100% recyclable. With the amount of cardboard we have, we can replace plastic completely.

My idea is to create a graphic solution so that the user will know how to create a bag out of cardboard they get.

Online shopping has become extremely popular for many people. Companies such as Amazon uses cardboard for their parcel. My idea is to print the instruction on every Amazon boxes. I want the user to have a very easy experience on creating DIY cardboard bags. I want to use as much of the cardboard as possible. I don’t want the user to have to use any scissors or any adhesive. This way people would be willing to reuse the cardboard instead of recycling it.

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Here are some of the sketches I’ve made for the cardboard bag idea.

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I started doing some prototypes for idea. My aim is to make it as easy as possible for the user to assemble. What I did in the prototyping stage is I created a miniature version of a bag and played around with the shape. I went for the tapered shaped bag. I did this to imitate the design of existing bags.

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FINAL OUTCOME

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This will be the instruction that will come with Amazon boxes. The idea is that Amazon will still be able to use their boxes for their parcel and when the user received the parcel they will see the printed instruction inside the box and will hopefully reuse the box as a practical shopping bag.

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The images show the cardboard box converted into cardboard bag. The cardboard will support most of the shopping items you buy. It is very light and you fold it flat so it won’t take space in your house or car. Because it is cardboard, it is not waterproof. Frozen items will cause the bag to break. Overall, it’s a small change that will create a massive difference to our planet.

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